


Life Support

by Gimmemocha



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-09
Updated: 2015-11-09
Packaged: 2018-04-30 19:55:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5177684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gimmemocha/pseuds/Gimmemocha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kaidan and Shepard have tentatively renewed their relationship as the war against the Reapers goes on. But unspoken, left hanging, are two years of separation, Kate Shepard's lover, and Kaidan's off-hand remark. It's time to clear the air.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life Support

**Author's Note:**

> I have never wanted to hit a game character as much as I wanted to deck Kaidan Alenko for saying to Shepard, "I understand why you cheated..." That there was no Renegade "Punch Kaidan in the nose" option still rankles. After the way they left things, he should be glad she's willing to take him back at all. I've wanted to write this for awhile, and I know I owe a chapter in another fic, but I replayed ME3 for N7 day and when I got to that conversation again, I had to stop to write this.

Kate Shepard stood in the life support area of the ship and stared at the table and chairs still left in there. There was even a cup on one side of the table. The quiet whispers of the machinery soothed her, even while the emptiness gnawed at her heart.

She could still see him there, calm and quiet, a spreading pool of peace and acceptance that would make room for her every time she entered. She could hear his voice, the purring cadence that doubled the sound, would make it ripple through her when he murmured against her skin with surprisingly supple lips. She could smell him, she thought, the spicy, curious warmth like nothing she'd ever smelled before.

But all of that was illusion. He was gone, dead, and never coming back.

_Siha…_

She always came here when she needed a measure of the peace he had offered, came here and stared at his empty chair. Even though they'd spent as much time in her cabin as here, it was here she felt him most strongly. And she needed some of that peace now.

The door opened behind her. She turned her head enough to allow peripheral vision to see who entered.

"Hey," Kaidan said.

"Hey."

"You weren't in the cabin. EDI told me you were here."

Kate thought EDI had more discretion than that. But her tentatively renewed relationship with Kaidan might have bought him more access. Or, more cynically, his Spectre status had.

"She, uh… She said you come here a lot."

Trust EDI to keep track. It wasn't like an AI forgot.

"Look, if I'm intruding…"

"No," she said. "Just thinking."

"About him. The assassin."

Irritation. "Thane."

"Yeah. Sorry."

"Are you?"

"What?"

She turned, arms folded still. "Are you sorry? About being jealous?"

He leaned a shoulder against the wall. "No, I guess I'm not sorry about that. Should I be?"

"I didn't cheat on you, you know."

He sighed. "Shepard…"

"You blew me off, Kaidan. Then you send me that letter, and I didn't know what to think."

"C'mon, I thought we were past this."

She turned away. "I guess we're not."

Silence filled the room, silence and machinery hum and regrets and memories.

"Okay. You loved him."

"Yes."

"Tell me about him."

Surprised, she looked over her shoulder. "What, seriously?"

"Yeah, seriously. He was important to you. I should know about him."

Uneasy, she looked back at the table. All this feelings crap? She had never been good at it. She could do a stirring speech if she had to, could inspire troops, but ask her to vent an honest feeling and suddenly she couldn't unstick her tongue from the roof of her mouth. But Kaidan deserved it. And Thane deserved it more.

"The first time I saw him," she began slowly, "he dropped from a ceiling and killed four people in the time it took me to realize he was moving. It's not like those sword-assassin idiots that Cerberus trains; no posing, no stupid cartwheels. It was just… economical grace. Fluid. From one to the next before the first body hit the floor."

She hesitated there.

"He impressed you."

"Yeah," she said. "I mean, I've killed my share of people. Hell, if you count that Batarian colony, I'm the biggest mass-murderer in human history. But I'm… I'm a soldier, Kaidan. I'm all brute force and bullets. Thane was…"

Her tongue wouldn't unstick. She shrugged. "Then I got to know him. Talked with him. Being with Thane was like… being in a church. That kind of peace, that kind of quiet. He accepted his life, his death, the things that had happened to him, and he was okay with it all. He was okay with the whole damned universe. 

"There I was without a clue even who the hell I was now, and no time to figure it out because I had to stop the Collectors. You know me. I focused on that, ignored the rest, and blew a hole through anything in my way. It works for me."

"But it's not always the best way to handle yourself," Kaidan said quietly.

"Yeah, so the shrinks tell me."

"And Thane helped."

She nodded, just a little. "He made it all right to be me. Every doubt, every insecurity just vanished into him. I wasn't Commander Shepard, not after we got to know each other. I was just Kate, just his siha.

"When I was with him, it wasn't like the universe was put on pause, with it all out there still waiting for me, weighing on the back of my mind. It just disappeared. He made this space where there was just him. Just me. I knew who I was when I was with him."

Kaidan's hands cupped around her shoulders. "Then I'm glad. That he was there for you."

"Really?"

He turned her toward him, a motion she didn't fight. "Yeah," he said. "I'm glad he was there for you when I wasn't. Couldn't be. I… guess I'm not jealous of him as much as I'm jealous that he got to have that part of you."

"Kaidan—"

"No, I mean it. I couldn't be there, and yeah, I guess I was hurt that there was anyone else, but between that and making you suffer alone? I'd choose being jealous every time."

"I didn't cheat on you."

"I know. I didn't mean it like that."

"Sounded like you did."

"C'mon, I'm trying to apologize, here."

Reluctantly, she smiled. "You always did suck at apologies."

"Are you still mad at me?"

"For the cheating crack?"

"No, I mean… I mean for not coming with you on Horizon."

"No," she said, surprised. "Kaidan, if anyone understands duty, it's me. If you'd dumped your responsibilities to follow me around, I'd have lost all respect for you. You're a soldier. You can't just ignore orders because your girlfriend turns up, and I sure as hell didn't think you'd dump your entire career to join a Cerberus ship."

He huffed a laugh. "Yeah, I guess I should've known you'd understand."

"I do," she said quietly.

"Me too," he said, pulling her close, just to hold her.

_"Uh, Commander? Not to be a buttinsky, but Hackett's on the vidcom, wants to know if you plan to get out to Eden Prime anytime soon."_

"I swear Joker's monitoring us," she grumbled.

"We got almost seven whole minutes," Kaidan said. "That's practically a record."

Louder, she said, "Tell the Admiral we're on our way, and set course for Eden Prime."

_"Will do, Commander. You probably have time if you two want to try for thirty minutes and beat your record."_

"Joker!"

_"Just saying, Commander. Seven minutes? That's sad, Kaidan."_

"You mean, that's sad, _Major,_ " Kaidan said.

_"Sir, yes sir. Setting course for Eden Prime. You're down to about 29 minutes now."_

Kate's smile was matched by Kaidan's. "Twenty-nine minutes, huh?"

"Think we can make it to your cabin without getting caught?"

She reached up to tangle her hands in his hair, regulation though it was. "I'm the commander," she murmured, pulling him into a kiss. "I'm the one who does the catching."


End file.
